I found Isabel still sitting in Annie’s crib after I raced back home. Somehow, in all of the commotion, we had slammed the door to Annie’s room shut and Isabel had been sitting in complete darkness all that time.
I scooped her into my arms and apologized over and over for leaving her. Isabel said nothing and remained slack in my embrace. Her lack of any response made me pull away and check to make sure she was OK.
Isabel just stared blankly at me with no emotion.
“Are you OK, Isabel?” I asked.
She just nodded absentmindedly. I feared that she might be in some kind of shock, so I stupidly grabbed a blanket from Annie’s crib and wrapped it around Isabel as I bounded down the stairs to return to the hospital.
My wife had stayed behind to talk to a grief counselor and to fill out a mountain of paperwork. I joined her later to help get us through the requirements. Unfortunately, that meant figuring out what happened and explaining it to the police.
Fortunately, law enforcement has female officers trained for situations like this. Women just naturally carry an empathetic manner and are much easier to talk to than a male officer would be. Officer Lorraine Paramore was exactly what we needed at the most horrible time in our life.
“LP,” as she insisted we call her, talked calmly and soothingly with us. She didn’t begin to cry, but she seemed to be on the verge at any minute – and that made her more relatable.
A nurse came by and examined Isabel to make sure she wasn’t in shock. She wasn’t. Even though she was stoic, both the nurse and LP thought this to be a normal response but said we should keep an eye on her.
Slowly, with gentle prodding, Isabel began to speak about what happened. She spoke with no emotion, which was completely unlike her. Every story she had told since she strung together her first words were accompanied by a flurry of visual animation. With Isabel, it was always a story and a show. My favorite times were when there were real or not-so-real characters, because Isabel insisted on talking in their voices and acting out their mannerisms.
But as the story went on, Isabel remained almost monotone and casually talked about being in Annie’s room right before she cried. She was just there to look in on the baby to make sure she was OK. But when Annie started to cry, Isabel crawled into the crib to comfort her. She said the baby was shivering, so she had wrapped her blanket around Annie. Isabel paused as she looked blankly at the same blanket that was now wrapped around her own shoulders.
Isabel said she had held Annie tight so that she would warm up and stop shivering. Isabel said Annie stopped crying, but it took a little while before she stopped shivering. When she finally stopped, Isabel held her a little longer and then decided to cradle her like big girls do. It was when she kissed her forehead that she felt that Annie was still feeling cold, but was no longer moving at all. Isabel said she tried to wake her but she wouldn’t wake up. That’s apparently when we head the wail.
As my wife, LP, and I exchanged concerned glances, Isabel removed Annie’s blanket from around her shoulders and dropped it quietly to the floor.